Mercer residents recall experience at Boston Marathon

Of the more than 20,000 runners who took to the streets of Boston for the Marathon Monday before the bombing that killed three and injured hundreds, more than two dozen came from the Trenton area.

Princeton native Rick Hrabchak finished the race minutes before the first bomb went off, and was waiting in a runners-only area less than 200 feet from the finish line. When he heard the first explosion on Boyleston Street, he immediately knew something was wrong.

“I felt ‘this is what it’s like in Israel, this is what they have to deal with in Jerusalem and the Middle East,” he said.

Hrabchak said he and the other runners in that area, who had just finished the 26.2 mile race, were told to “run, run, get out of here, move” for several minutes before going back closer to the finish line. He and other runners went back to two of the tents, one held the personal items of runners and the other would soon house many of the dozens of injured from the two bomb blasts.

“There were ambulances all over the place and no runners anywhere,” he said.

Ewing resident Martine McGrath finished the race 40 minutes before she heard the two blasts. At the time, she was leaving a medical tent that was two block away.

“After we heard that, you could kind of tell it was something unexpected,” the 2010 graduate from The College of New Jersey said. “Some people thought it might have been cannons for Patriot’s Day, but you knew it was unexpected because you saw all the police and some of the volunteers for the race rushing to the finish line.”

The 26-year-old said the scene that followed was chaotic because cell service was not working and runners who finished the race were looking for friends and family.

“The whole post-race plan that you plan with everyone who’s coming to watch you kind of goes out the window and then you’re left wandering around Boston,” McGrath said. “To see this big mass exodus from the whole finish area, which is usually a great place to be after a marathon, but in this case you were trying to get out of there with your family members and friends as fast as you could.”

Emotions hit the racers after the explosions.

Inside the tent, Hrabchak said the attitude had changed drastically from other races.

“It was a quiet, sad, somber feeling unlike what you would expect at the end of a marathon,” he said.

“It was a terrible tragedy for the people injured and their friends and family. They should all know that everyone involved is not alone, they have a community.”

Hrabchak soon left to find his car, about half a mile away from the race. He said he has run in 13 Boston Marathons, and said he would run again next year if the city holds the race. He predicted the running community would band together and come back after the bombing.

Stephanie Iantorno, a senior at Princeton University, said she was proud about the way the community had banded together in the immediate aftermath of the bombing. She had already finished the race and left downtown Boston by the time the bombs went off. She said it was her third marathon and her first time running the event in Boston.

Media reports from the scene said many runners, in addition to first responders, ran to the scene of the blasts to start helping people in the immediate aftermath. The running community is full of “really kind and giving people,” she said.

McGrath said no one from her group of seven people was injured. She said they stayed in Boston another night because the city was in lock-down mode.

“There was really no way for us to get out unless we waited until very late at night,” she said.

Iantorno said she would run the marathon again, perhaps next year they would “run in honor of all the families” hurt during the marathon Monday.

McGrath, who ran track and field and cross county at TCNJ, also said she would be back.

“It’s a big event for a runner,” she said, adding this race was her third marathon. “You don’t want this to be the way you remember doing it, so I’m definitely doing it again.”